


Mei Kaupp Lipluxe in "All Fired Up"

by RocBaroque



Category: Layton Brothers: Mystery Room
Genre: Alcyone Layton, Cisswap, Lucas Baker - Freeform, Rule 63, cross-posted from tumblr, we all agreed Layton would be a smoker right
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-07
Updated: 2015-01-07
Packaged: 2018-03-06 13:45:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3136610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RocBaroque/pseuds/RocBaroque
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alcyone Layton–the REAL one, thank you–wakes up in her flat, and immediately starts undermining the OTHER one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mei Kaupp Lipluxe in "All Fired Up"

She comes to with a start, a full-body shiver, like surfacing in ice water. Everything burns and tingles for a moment, details emerging from an all-encompassing blur as her lungs ache for air. The buzzing in her ears resolves into a whistle, growing louder and louder, and the play of light is moving pictures glowing from a small television. She’s overwhelmed with the smell of lavender. The tea kettle is screaming, she can’t hear the news.

Waking up feels like being shot, ironically enough. She casts her eyes around the room slowly, gradually, processing the details. Clothing tossed over the side of the sofa, a blanket puddled on the floor, an air freshener in every corner, a remote in her hand, and she’s in nothing but knickers and a bra.

“Please,” she mutters, voice low and rough, like she hasn’t used it in ages. “Please,” she repeats, “let this be my flat.”

The carpet feels familiar. Newspapers are stacked over the telly, next to the sofa, piling up next to the breakfast bar. Clippings are taped to the walls, the doors, the bookcase, the fridge. The rubbish bin is piled with pizza boxes stained by tea bags. It has the look and feel of a madman’s house. She wrenches the stove knobs savagely, all but tossing the shrieking kettle across the kitchen. The morning news program laughs tinnily, before moving on to another feel-good story. A yellow newspaper slides off the television set and strews across the floor.

Her narrow chest heaves with one deep breath. It’s definitely her flat.

“But why am I awake?” Alcyone wonders aloud, testing out the words and getting used to the feel of her own mouth again. There were no triggers. She doesn’t remember the morning, or any of the night. Was she getting stronger—strong enough to take over again, with no reason or warning?

Bare feet pad across the hard carpet, and she takes stock of her fortune while she paces. The morning show informs her it’s 7:30 on a Tuesday morning. A rush of excitement, vindication, bowls her over. She has to be at the Yard in an hour. _She_ has to be there.

She throws the door to her room open, scrambles to the closet. The bed is pristine—no one’s sleeping in here—and newspaper scraps speckle the walls. She rips a few from the closet doors before sliding them aside. Her heart skips painfully. There are only a handful of hangers, overburdened with shapeless sweaters. She reaches for one, tears it down, and catches sight of something slim and white from the corner of her eye.

The _Other_ had covered the mirror with newspaper. “How telling,” she murmurs, peeling away tape and grey newsprint. What she finds isn’t horrifying, but neither is it pleasing. Her hair’s grown shockingly, unkempt and wild. Her cheekbones protrude far too much, in a face that’s already too sharp to begin with. Her collarbones have a knife-edge, the gunshot scar puckers against a rib, her stomach’s gone concave, there’s a good inch and a half between her thighs.

“You’re starving us,” she snaps at the mirror. She doesn’t get a reply. “And what’s this…?” Her fingertips find the thick edge of a square patch past her shoulder. She digs it off with her fingernails, wincing through the burn, and casts the thing to the floor. The sight, the _idea_ of the patch fills her with revulsion. Hands trembling, she throws open dusty drawers in the unused bedroom chests, until she comes to the final stash.

Only two left in the crumpled pack, a nearly-depleted lighter their only companion. She groans in relief. “I’m so sorry, love.” She slips one of the cigarettes between her lips and coaxes a spark from the lighter. “My body, my addictions.” She takes a cautious sip of smoke, suppresses the powerful urge to cough.

Hand on one thin hip, head spinning from the long-absent nicotine rush, Alycone takes another brave approach of the closet. Years ago, these clothes would have been one size too large—thanks to the efforts of the _Other_ , they could easily engulf her and one other woman. _Which is exactly what I am_ , she reminds herself.

At the back of the closet, she finds treasure—a matching skirt and blazer, a jewel-bright blouse, a single pair of coordinated pumps with a wadded pair of stockings. The last of a full wardrobe of professional clothing, driven to extinction, kept to be used only when needed and useful. She wants to feel relieved at this last vestige of her past life, but the bile is building, irrepressible heat burning in her chest. She tosses the clothing over one shoulder, dangles the shoes from her hand, pinches the cigarette between her hard lips.

The washroom is sparse but blessedly free of newspaper, one of the lights blown out, only the most spartan of accoutrements available. She dresses in fits and starts, pausing to smoke, to glare into the mirror. It would take months to get her weight back, months of consecutive time she knows she doesn’t have. The tailored clothes, once a real fashion find, hang like drapes, accentuate the new angles of her body, angles she never consented to. The pumps hurt her feet like she never remembers them doing. A full day of work in heels would do untold damage. “But just imagine the look on Baker’s face,” she instructs the mirror, and she leans in to study the reflection, her smile growing wide and greedy. He blushes so easily. He’s never seen her at her best. “My body, my addictions.” She drops her cigarette to the tile floor, grinds it under her six-centimeter heel.

The makeup bag is still there, thank God, and for a few minutes she’s quiet, meditative, absorbed in the act of enhancement. The cheekbones recede, hazel eyes more amber than grey, eyebrows in some shape or another. There’s nothing to be done about her hair, shocking and curly and red red red, impossible to keep out of her eyes and impossible to tie back. It reminds her of something she’s missing, however, and she goes back to the bag.

She scoops the inside of the bag with her fingertips, picks it up and shakes it out. A month before she was… a month before the _incident_ , she purchased a very particular lip color: a very specific red, the kind that frightens, that matches her hair and her words and the way her smile is more a baring of fangs than a gesture of goodwill. She’d worn it every day. She’d stained Henrik’s collar.

There’s nothing left in the bag.

Alcyone carefully, quietly, sets it down on the counter.

The pump is in her hand, heel out. There’s a terrible sound, worse than a body hitting the ground but not quite as bad as a gunshot. The mirror shatters under the heel. There’s a gaping hole where her face should be, glass tinkling down to the sink and the counter and the floor. Her throat aches and she realizes she’s roaring—screaming, really, her rage pouring out of her sharp as knives, her rage the only thing that seems to belong to her anymore.

Nausea consumes her, dizziness doubles her over. It’s not the cigarette. She crouches on her heels, missing a shoe, clinging to the counter, head against the sink.

“What gave you the right,” she rasps, fading into smoke. The outside world is a blur of color.

\- - -

“Eeh, how d’you even get here so early, Prof?” He heaved a guilty sigh, shaking his umbrella and latching the door behind him. The already-overburdened coat rack gained another jacket. “D’you even leave th’ office?”

The Inspector gave him a mild look, touched with that ever-present ghost of a smile. “Good morning, Lucas.” The long edges of her white coat trailed from her chair like the feathers of wings. She shuffled the file in her hand, grasping for another from a stack of identicals. “Actually, I was here late as well.”

“You weren’t!” He grimaced, rubbing his neck. “Guess I waint beat you here even when you’re late.”

Rain cascaded down the windowpanes, filling the little room with soft grey light. Lucas was already at the electric kettle, hunting for a clean mug. Alcyone continued rustling papers, tapping one foot softly, scanning for only she knew what.

He paused, turned to appraise her over his shoulder. The quiet wasn’t unusual, not exactly, but something was off about her that he couldn’t identify, and his instincts were rarely wrong.

“Everythin’ alright, Prof?” He touched the desk in front of her in case she wasn’t hearing.

She gave a small start, her faded hazel eyes traveling up his fingers. When she reached his face she smiled. “Yes, I’m perfectly fine. Just—” The barest of winces darted across her features. He knit his brows. “I just had something that didn’t agree with me this morning.”

Lucas knocked on the desk. “Tea!” He announced, scooping up her mug. “Y’need more tea.”

He didn’t bother with the old bags, knowing she’d give a lecture on the importance of efficiency and the benefits of resteeping. Two more bags of extra bergamot Earl Grey were added to the mess, and in a frenzy of inspiration, he reached for the lemon ginger. A sheaf of scrap paper fell to the floor, and a clatter of something small and metallic.

“Eeh, what’s this?” He picked up a shining silver tube the length of his finger, sticker residue collecting dust. “Lipstick?”

The rustling of papers from the desk stopped abruptly. Lucas held the stick up for her to see, the dull, stormy light reflecting across the room.

Alcyone turned back to the file. “Yes, that was evidence for an old case. I’d forgotten about it. You can throw it away.”

“Throw it away? It looks bomb…” The silver case was trimmed with yellow chrome, engraved with a calligraphied “MK” logo.

“Do you have a use for it?” She was smiling again over the high collar of her turtleneck.

He made a sputtering noise between his lips. “In’t rubbish it goes, then.”

It made a heavy, echoing sound in the bin.

**Author's Note:**

> I still have a lot I want to do with this interpretation of the characters but I don't have a lot of time yet for the big detective story I have planned out.. so.. character sketches....


End file.
